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Howard Lovecraft and the Frozen Kingdom by Bruce Brown
Review by Sandra Scholes
Created as a child friendly graphic novel, this story is aimed at those who might not have heard of the writer Howard Phillips Lovecraft, the man who wrote intensely scary horror stories based on the Cthulhu mythos.
Old gods and monsters would normally terrify the young, and this is a novel that will introduce the well-known genre to children across the world.
The cover art is endearing, picturing Howard and the Cthulhu-type creature behind him. The book is somewhat comical in nature and just the thing to get children to warm to the characters, much in the same way as they have to Ood in the Dr Who series, who are very much similar creatures.
The premise is that Howard – the young son of the Lovecraft family – is taken by his mother into an asylum where his father is kept under constant surveillance, and as he has not shown any promise of getting to better mental health the understanding is that he will be kept there for a very long time – much to the disappointment of his son. However, during a moment of lucidity he hands the boy a strange looking star and asks him to destroy it or mankind will not be safe. Everyone else thinks he is mad, yet the boy has other ideas.
Even though the Lovecraftian terror aspects of the story are left out, the strange and unusual have been kept, as has the atmospheric horror element. There is just the right amount of psychological peculiarity to get the younger end of the reading group to be interested in the novels of Lovecraft without it instilling childhood nightmares. It is an impressive start to a series of novels that could, in a sense, be so original that they will be a great success – even though at the moment the trend in novels is for the Vampiric.
The art contained within is well drawn and conveys an fantastic amount of dread and strangeness. This is a book for children, but one in which they are treated as adults. Recommended.
About Lovecraft
Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890-1937) is probably the most important and influential author of supernatural fiction of the 20th century. A life-long resident of Providence, R.I., many of his tales are set in the fear-haunted towns of an imaginary area of Massachusetts, or in the cosmic vistas that exist beyond space and time. Since his untimely death, he has become acknowledged as a master of fantasy fiction, and a mainstream American writer second only to Edgar Allan Poe, while his relatively small body of work has influenced countless imitators and formed the basis of a world-wide industry of books, games and movies based on his concepts.
Posted: January 31st, 2010
Author: Lee
Categories: Graphic Novels
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